What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the process of promoting a product or service through the various social media channels. In general, there are two ways to perform a social media marketing campaign.

The first way is free and has to do with building followers, fans or connections by sharing useful content, running contests and generally engaging with your users.

The second way is through paid advertising. You can use Facebook ads, Google Adwords or Twitter promoted accounts to advertise your product or services on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter respectively.

Digital marketing VS Social media

It should be clear after reading the above definitions that social media is a major component of Internet Marketing which is part of Digital promotion. If we compare the two side by side we will find that:

It goes beyond the Internet and tries to reach people in the off-line world using digital means while social media is limited to the boundaries of the Internet.

A Campaign may include one or more components (Internet Advertising, Mobile ads, TV, SMS etc.) while a social media strategy may include one or more social media platforms (Facebook, twitter etc.)

Social media is strongly associated with a content strategy i.e. you create content and use social media to promote it while a digital advertising can concentrate entirely on banners (either on the Internet, TV or billboards) for promotion.

What does a typical digital marketing include?

While the digital marketing components are a lot, a typical campaign includes mostly items from the Internet Marketing family. It is very common to see a promotional campaign with: